Inside New York City's Fishy Black Market

At 3:15 in the morning, Jamie Powers and Kevin Thomas, environmental conservation officers for New York state, ease their 31-foot boat into the inky waters of Jamaica Bay, which bisects the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. The city's lights project ethereally across the starry, cloudless sky. There isn't a hint of wind in the air. "Can't ask for a better night," says Powers. "They'll be out there I bet."

"Out there" is Breezy Point, the westernmost part of the Rockaway peninsula in Queens, a fish-rich stretch of water that's the unofficial separation of the Atlantic from the harbor of New York. "They" are the poachers who haunt those waters, men who catch more than the legal limit of fish--striped bass, sea bass, fluke and blackfish (tautog)--then sell them on the black market.

The illegal fish eventually end up in Chinatown, the Fulton Fish Market, various city mom-and-pop seafood stores and even on the plates of high-end Manhattan restaurants. Worse still, some of those fish are full of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which at worst, cause cancer and at best wreck humans' immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems.

Powers, a compact 36-year-old with a shaved head, flips off the boat's lights. Thomas, a tall, bespectacled 29-year-old, maintains a puttering pace at the helm, even though he has a few nautical miles to cover and the power of two Mercury 300 hp outboard motors at his fingertips. Stealth is paramount. Thomas and Powers don't want to alert any would-be poachers with the noise of greater speed. "Once one guy out here sees us, he'll get right on his radio and tell everyone 'the cat's out to play,'" says Powers. They're both dressed in their standard-issue outfits: black Rocky boots, green cargo pants, short-sleeved green shirts, hats with "Police" emblazoned on the front and Glock 40s strapped to their thighs.

Thomas and Powers have a specific target in mind this morning, a man named Bob who they believe has been illegally catching striped bass off Breezy Point for many months. Striped bass are a big marine fish concern of the DEC not only because they are a prized game fish for recreational anglers, but also because they are full of PCBs, thanks to the
General Electric
plants upstream on the Hudson that pumped the contaminants into the water for 30 years until 1976. There is no commercial fishery for stripers in New York City waters.

But on the unhurried crawl out to Breezy, Powers spots something else. "Two o'clock," he yells to Thomas. It's another boat, traveling rapidly in the opposite direction, hugging the Brooklyn shore, with only the green starboard light visible. Thomas guns the throttle. The engines roar in response. A mouse has wandered into the cat's cradle.

They maneuver behind the boat. Powers flicks on blue strobe lights and a giant spotlight. The boat is an old lobster-style rig. Thomas reaches for the loudspeaker handle and yells. "Stop your boat. Now!" The spotlight illuminates two men in the back. "They're dumping!" Powers says. Thomas gets on the loudspeaker again: "Do not dump!" he yells. The lobster boat makes a hard right. Both Powers and Thomas say they see the men on the lobster boat tossing buckets of fish overboard and kicking the few stragglers off the backless transom of the boat. The lack of a barrier on boat's back is intentional, says Powers. It makes it easier to quickly dispose of an illegal catch.

The lobster boat finally stops. Thomas pulls alongside. It turns out that there are three men onboard. Powers jumps onto the lobster boat and yells, "Get your hands up where I can see them. Get them up!" Powers orders all of the men to the back of the boat. He confiscates their cellphones so they can't alert anyone else.

Then the amplitude of Powers' voice falls a notch or two, with the men complying and the situation seemingly under control. Powers addresses the man at the helm by name. "Louie, step away from the cockpit." Powers turns to one of the other men. "Bill, want to step back there for me?" The players all know each other in this cat-and-mouse game.

The three men are New York City commercial fishermen. They look like scolded schoolchildren, their expressions doleful as they silently watch Powers search the compartments of the boat. Powers finds 24 blackfish in the livewell, one under the legal limit. No other fish are found onboard.

"They kicked over a felony," says Thomas. But he and Powers believe they have the men on a violation and a misdemeanor: failure to comply with an order (when they didn't stop immediately) and dumping fish overboard, respectively. The charges could cost the men up to $1,500 each. It could even cost more: The higher-ups at the DEC will decide whether or not to go after their commercial fishing licenses.

Powers stays on the lobster boat and Thomas follows behind, back to the docks. They want to see who their buyers are.

The lobster rig, owned by Louis Benitto, the man at the helm, docks in a marina in Brooklyn's Gerritsen Creek. As the boats pull up to the dock, an Asian man wearing a yellow-and-white rain coat crouches on a knoll, staring out at the boats. "That's the buyer," says Thomas. The DEC officers know him only as Sammy. He's the conduit to the legitimate and illegitimate markets, Thomas believes. If Sammy is surprised to see the police boat, he hides it well--he doesn't move a muscle. Perhaps he knows that Powers and Thomas have nothing on him this morning. Sammy can just claim he was there to buy the 24 legal fish.

At the dock, Powers and Thomas fill out the paperwork for the two violations to each of the men: Benitto, Bill Dunphy and Joseph Lauro.

The three men, all in their mid-50s, are retired fireman who fish commercially to make a bit of money on the side. To a man, they all say they were just cleaning the boat when the DEC snuck up behind them. "We were getting the clam and mussel shells off the back," says Dunphy. The backless transom on the custom-made boat isn't for easier dumping, he says. It's to make it easier to set out blackfish traps and clean the boat. "I guess running us down is how the state makes its money," he says.

Lauro says that the incident was the fourth time in two months that Powers and Thomas had stopped them. "They go out of their way to harass us," he says. Benitto, who was once known as "the blackfish king" for his prowess at taking large fish on a rod and reel (fishermen use lobster pots these days) calls Powers and Thomas "two Gestapos." Benitto recently had a pacemaker put in after a heart attack. "They know I have a bad heart. Every time they stop me my blood pressure goes through the roof," he says. "I probably won't step on the boat again. They broke my spirit."

Powers says the trio has been on their radar for months and this bust "came a little earlier than we really wanted." Still, he says, judging from the amount of fish he saw them dump overboard, the morning's meeting could have cost the men "thousands of dollars and four to five nights of hard work." And the tickets could separate the three men from some money due to the fines. It will definitely cost them time--the court date is set for late September.

Thomas and Powers both studied biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. They are both from upstate New York, lifelong devotees of the outdoors, having spent their childhoods hunting, fishing and camping. Becoming a DEC officer, Powers says, is a way of "giving back a little." Being posted in New York City has its drawbacks. The state only provides a modest bump in salary to cover the higher cost of living (both Powers and Thomas live on Rockaway). But the action is nearly nonstop. Powers and Thomas make up exactly two-thirds of the total number of environmental cops who cover the 650 miles of NYC shoreline. The city's poachers may take from 250 to 1,000 fish a week; there's really no way to know for sure.

Powers and Thomas have made some high-profile busts: earlier this year on a plainclothes assignment, they caught two poachers with 49 illegal striped bass. "I feel like the amount of poaching in these waters as gone down in the last year or so," says Powers. The cat seems to be keeping the mouse population at bay, at least a bit.

A Public Health Issue

In the black market fish world, the poachers usually sell their illegal harvest to a buyer, someone like Sammy, who acts as a middleman. Black market striped bass can usually get $5 a pound. Blackfish, which are usually only three to four pounds in weight, command higher prices, up to $8 a pound.

The buyer then takes the haul to Chinatown, the Fulton Fish Market, small fish shops or restaurants. Powers and Thomas regularly do sweeps of these places. All fish must be properly documented with papers. With striped bass, the owner of the fish must have a tag (which is attached to the lip of the fish) and is required to keep the head of the fish until the rest of it is entirely consumed. The head allows an inspector to gauge the striper's weight. With stripers, enforcement is a public health issue. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the PCBs often found in this fish have been shown to cause "a variety of serious health effects ... on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system and endocrine system." And the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services says PCBs "are reasonably anticipated to be carcinogens." The New York Department of Health advises that women of childbearing age and children under 15 not eat any striped bass from New York Harbor.

On the Hunt

A few days after the blackfish bust, Powers and Thomas are on dry land, on a hot and sunny midday in Manhattan. They've parked their DEC truck at the corner of 43rd Street and Ninth Avenue. Powers and Thomas routinely check out menus from restaurants ranging from the high end to the low end, looking for the key words: wild striped bass. They've been tipped off that Esca, a high-end seafood restaurant on 43rd, serves this fish.

Esca was founded in 2000 by chef/owner David Pasternack, a well-known city chef who was the 2004 recipient of the James Beard New York Chef of the Year award and will soon be appearing on the Food Network's Iron Chef. Esca is known for its fresh fish, particularly its crudo (Italian-style raw fish), and Pasternack was the subject of a fawning 2005 profile in The New Yorker. The writer, Mark Singer, detailed Pasternack's love of catching his own fish for his restaurant. Singer described him as understanding the fish business "better than just about anyone," but admitting that the labyrinth of that state's size and slot limits and regulations made the business "very complicated."

On visits to higher-end establishments, Powers and Thomas usually give a courtesy call so they can enter through the back. After all, seeing two officers waltz in at the lunch hour with Glocks strapped to their thighs might be bad for business.

They call Esca and Simon Dean, the restaurant manager, lets them in through a side door on 43rd. Pasternack is in the kitchen, filleting a mackerel on a cutting board. He's a big man with a shaved head and healthy tan. Powers and Thomas explain their visit. Pasternack seems eager to comply. He shows off a bag full of papers and receipts from the last month of fish deliveries. Thomas thumbs threw them. Powers asks Pasternack if he has any striped bass. Pasternack replies: "No." (Reached later, Pasternack says he indeed did tell Powers that he "had some filleted stuff.")

The three of them walk down a set of stairs to the basement, where the seafood is kept in coolers. Pasternack follows Thomas into a walk-in cooler to show him his lobsters. Various kitchen workers are buzzing about, cleaning pots and pans, preparing appetizers. While Pasternack is in the cooler and out of sight, Powers opens a few ice trays. He finds one packed with striper filets. When Pasternack reappears, Powers asks him again if he has any stripers. Pasternack again says he doesn't (Pasternack denies this). Powers asks him to open up the ice trays. Pasternack does. "I've got crabs in this one," he says, opening a tray. "Clams here," he says, opening another. Finally, he gets to the tray with the striper filets.

"Have the tags for these fish?" asks Powers. Pasternack says he doesn't. Thomas then appears from the walk-in cooler with another tray of striper filets. "Have the heads for those fish?" Powers asks. Pasternack says he threw them out, and that he didn't know he was supposed to keep them.

Powers and Thomas take out the filets, which were supposed to be part of a $34 dish, and weigh them. They come to 13.5 pounds, not enough for a misdemeanor. But they cite Pasternack for two violations: failure to keep the tags and failure to keep the heads. The charge could be up to $1,500.

Pasternack asks what they are going to do with the filets. "I hope you're going to at least give them to some homeless people," he says. Powers explains that by law they have to destroy the fish because without the tags, they could be from city waters and thus contaminated. "But those guys will eat anything," says Pasternack. When Powers replies that he can't do it, Pasternack says, "What a waste."

Pasternack says he knew there was a tag and head law for fish markets, but wasn't aware that there was one for restaurants. "It's a new one to me," he says. (Powers says the regulation has been on the books since he started working in the city in 2005.) "I try as much as I can to run an upstanding business," says Pasternack. "Whaddaya gonna do?" Pasternack says the fish were from Delaware and not from the New York Harbor. But with no tags, it's impossible to tell.

Powers and Thomas issue Pasternack the tickets. His court date is at the end of September. The officers then jump back in their truck, off to another restaurant.